After several centuries of relative stability, the ways in which knowledge is created, consumed, and shared today are rapidly changing. These changes are enabled in part by networking tools and new modes of social production, and in part by the growing movement towards open access to the scholarly literature and educational resources. While innovative pedagogical and scholarly practices are flourishing as a result of open sharing and social learning, there remains serious intellectual, social, institutional and policy barriers to participation.
What then are the key challenges to scholarship in the digital age? What happens when scholars share research openly through institutional repositories, open access journals, and other social platforms such as wikis and blogs? What are the rewards of scholarship and teaching in an open access knowledge ecology? What kind of institutional support and incentives need to be put in place?
The goal of the presentation is not to prescribe answers, but to prompt debates and dialogues on how best to take full advantage of what the open access knowledge environment has to offer.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/06/2008 09:58:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
